ELECTORAL GOOD VERSUS EVIL
First-past-the-post’s big defenders
Get ready for another tidal wave of over-heated opinions about proportional representation in British Columbia.
This year is certain to include more high-profile naysaying from the well-funded opponents of proportional representation.
The B.C. Liberals are trotting out former attorney general Suzanne Anton as their official “No” voice. But, to be frank, she’s not that interesting, since everyone knows it’s the stark self-interest of her party to go with the status quo: First past the post.
The main weapon in the arsenal of the B.C. Liberals, and Social Credit before them, has been to unite the centre-right while splitting centre-left voters between the New Democrats and a smaller party. The centre-right has effectively done so to hold office for 53 of the past 66 years.
The more interesting opponent of proportional representation is NDP warhorse, union lobbyist and media commentator Bill Tieleman.
Tieleman has vowed he’s going to come out swinging again when the NDP (supported by the B.C. Greens) launches a referendum on proportional representation this year. And this time the NDP, rather than being neutral, has Premier John Horgan and others endorsing some form of proportional representation. So, according to the Angus Reid Institute, do two of three British Columbians.
My disagreements with Tieleman come despite admiration for the fellow. I’m often impressed by his quick wit in front of a microphone and general good cheer.
But I’m not alone in finding his bashing of proportional representation to be quite strange, especially for a longtime backer of the NDP, which values its reputation as a party of higher values.
The first of this five-point rebuttal focuses on Tieleman’s overblown rhetoric.
The first-past-the-post system “has served British Columbia very, very well. We’ve had stable governments, we’ve had great economic growth and it provides local, accountable representation,” Tieleman said recently.
The one-time critic of the Liberals’ 16 consecutive years in power chose not to mention things like B.C.’s housing crisis, abusive corporate and union funding of political parties (now banned by the NDP) and chronically lax environmental regulations.
As for some form of proportional representation, Tieleman blurted: “It’s a bad system. It’s a system that really doesn’t work in many, many places it’s been used.”
Why bother with nuance when you can go for cartoonish good-versus-evil?
Tieleman gives not a nod to scholarly studies of the advanced countries that use some form of proportional representation and which often have coalition governments. In one report on 36 democratic nations, Dutch political scientist Arend Lijphart found “consensus” democracies are as good as “majoritarian” ones at stimulating economic growth, controlling unemployment, limiting budget deficits and establishing stability.
What of a second argument of Tieleman and others: that proportional representation empowers party bosses and makes governments less accountable?
This shows impressive obliviousness to how first-past-the-post has handed B.C. premiers and others extraordinary clout. As Canadian historian Christopher Moore convincingly maintains: “A Canadian political party today is little more than a leader flanked by a bagman, a spindoctor and poll-taker; everyone else is just saying aye and pounding signs. Coalitions are by definition a sharing of leadership, a limitation on one’s power.”
Standing for electoral reform, Samir Ganesha, of SFU points to how many big countries that today are on the brink of authoritarianism, like Brazil, the Philippines, Venezuela, Turkey and Donald Trump’s U.S.A., rely predominantly on first-pastthe-post (and typically have low voter turnout to boot).
Then there is Tieleman’s propaganda-style warning that proportional representation will open a door to racists, fringe parties and the far right.
In a piece titled “Why is Bill Tieleman afraid of democracy?” Fair Vote Canada reasonably countered that jurisdictions with proportional representation adopt electoral tools to deal with extremists. Germany, for instance, requires a party to obtain five per cent of votes before it’s awarded any seats.
Tieleman and his followers cannot justifiably claim that the super-diverse West Coast is a seething bed of explosive racism.
Since when does a justiceminded person like Tieleman come to the reactionary belief that an idea that is not status quo must be dangerously fringy? The NDP and its predecessor, as well as the Greens, were also once dismissed as nutty or extremist. So was Martin Luther King.
A fourth strategy of Tieleman has been to air concern proportional representation could lead to the NDP never forming another majority government — and thus unable to bring in bold policy.
Coalition governments across Europe and elsewhere have been far more effective than any Canadian government in bringing in progressive legislation. And you can’t claim B.C.’s Greens want to water down the NDP; they are pushing it to be more radical.
Arguments that some form of proportional representation would mean B.C. would never again see a fearless NDP premier like the late Dave Barrett fail to recognize that partisan politics has become more slash-and-burn since Barrett was voted out in 1975.
It is the new normal for many leaders to immediately dismantle the most popular projects of the party it defeats. Thus voters end up reeling from “policy lurch,” which hurts democracy.
It is empty to declare that virtually no forward-thinking legislation would get done, or be maintained, if we had more proportional representation and coalition governments. For one, it is impossible to project voters’ intentions in a new system. And, regardless, maybe the NDP will draw kudos for taking a non-partisan higher road in the name of democracy.
We can’t read Tieleman’s mind. So I don’t know why an otherwise astute, left-wingish fellow is obsessively anti-proportional representation. Maybe Tieleman is a free thinker. Or simply a contrarian.
Some observers have this year been wondering about perceptions of conflict in light of his expanding financial arrangements with more than 17 lobby groups. And this month Tieleman wrote that he’s ending his columnist’s career in part because it complicates his ability to “write without restrictions.” He intends, however, to keep on publicly opposing proportional representation.
Whatever the case, respectfully, I feel called upon to highlight the weaknesses in what he acknowledges has been his long and extremely “consistent” denunciation of proportional representation.
This year is certain to include more high-profile naysaying from the well-funded opponents of proportional representation.